How to define a list with custom symbols?

Question

I'd like to define a list like the following:

The nearest I found while googling was this:

\begin{itemize}
\item[-] foo
\item[*] bar
\end{itemize}

But how can I now use a cross or a check symbol?

Answer 1

Use e.g. the \Checkmark and \XSolidBrush symbols from the bbding package. Good alternatives are \ding{51} and \ding{55} from the pifont package.

\usepackage{bbding}
%...
\begin{itemize}
  \item[\Checkmark] foo
  \item[\XSolidBrush] bar
\end{itemize}

You can even define a special macro for it:

\newcommand*\tick{\item[\Checkmark]}
\newcommand*\fail{\item[\XSolidBrush]}
% ...
\begin{itemize}
  \tick foo
  \fail  bar
\end{itemize}

See either the comprehensive symbol list (search for "Checkmark") or detexify to find other symbols if you don't like the one above.

Answer 2

Use a package which provides such symbols, such as MnSymbol, bbding or pifont. There are more. Use math mode within the square brackets if required.

Example:

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage{pifont}
\begin{document}
\begin{itemize}
 \item[\ding{51}] yes
 \item[\ding{55}] no 
\end{itemize}
\end{document}

You could define your own name for the symbol by \newcommand.

Answer 3

Dingbats are easy to obtain, from symbol packages like pifont etc. Further more, pifont package provides a dinglist environment:

% in preamble \usepackage{pifont}
\begin{dinglist}{52}
  \item foo
  \item bar
\end{dinglist}

In standard classes, itemize environments use \labelitemi, \labelitemii, \labelitemiii and \labelitemiv for item labels. You can also redefine them and use standard itemize.

% preamble
\usepackage{pifont}
\renewcommand\labelitemi{\ding{52}}
% document
\begin{itemize}
  \item foo
  \item bar
\end{itemize}